8,455 school leavers compete for 200 prison warder jobs

8,455 youths have applied to be recruited as prison warders but the Zambia Prison Service will only take 200 people, contrary to the statement of the service recruiting 1,000 that was made by Home affairs minister Davies Mwila.

Earlier this year, Mwila said that the prisons service will recruit more than 1,000 people so that at least ten new recruits can be deployed to each of the provinces, but insiders say that government doesn’t have money to train and employ such a huge number.

“We are under-staffed, we are very much below the standard ratio of a warder to a four prisoners and would want to employ more warders but we do not have resources. The same government is the one that cut that number from the 500 that we proposed and so we shall only recruit 200. We have so far received more than 8,000 applications,” said the source.

He further said that the 200 will most likely be children and dependants of well connected people and other officers serving in the Zambia prisons service. He described the ratio of applicants to the number of required recruits as devastating and a sign of high levels of unemployment.